Daydreams
by Laura Schiller
Summary: In the episode "Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy", a defective Doctor's private imaginings take on a concrete shape on the holodeck. What if Seven saw herself appear in his most romantic dreams?


Daydreams

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Star Trek Voyager

Copyright: Paramount

Seven stood with Captain Janeway in a corner of the holodeck, watching the three-dimensional simulations of the Doctor's daydreams and trying to ignore a mounting queasiness. It was a necessary procedure, she told herself; if they didn't figure out the malfunction in his subroutines, he might be permanently damaged. Privacy was irrelevant in comparison with his life and the safety of the ship. All the same, Seven was beginning to wonder just how necessary her presence was right now.

Applause rippled through a simulation of the mess hall as the Doctor strode in, faced with the entire crew wearing dress uniforms and smiles. A white banner hung across the ceiling: CONGRATULATIONS, DOCTOR!

A holographic Captain crossed the room, still clapping, reached into her pocket and hung a shimmering medal around the Doctor's neck. "Ladies and gentlemen," she announced, "It is my pleasure to introduce - the Emergency Command Hologram!"

The real Captain rolled her eyes. "How many times has this shown up again?" she muttered.

That was when the air in the holodeck began to shimmer, changing into the wood-paneled walls, electric lighting, and cheerful multi-species crowd of Chez Sandrine.

Seven cringed mentally. For her, it was a site of humiliation: the locale of her disastrous first and only date with the painfully polite Lt. Chapman. She had embarrassed him by calling out a loud demand for the waiter, spattered his shirt with lobster, and torn a ligament in his shoulder while trying to execute an underarm turn. All with the Doctor at the piano, witnessing his student's failure in that most important of social lessons, Dating. She had not set foot into this program since that day.

Now she watched the Doctor at the black baby grand, his homely features softened by the golden light. He was smiling, deep in the enchantment of the music, and he touched the keys with the same gentleness he used to handle his patients. Seven wondered if she could ever learn to play like that; with emotion, rather than her metronome, as a guide.

The door opened and Seven's eyes widened. There was a holographic Seven entering the bar, wearing a silvery lilac skirt and blouse, her hair down except for a single clip. She shimmered as she walked, a lady of gold and silver, and as she nodded to the Doctor in passing, his brown eyes filled with awe.

The real Seven was discomfited. This was a true memory – the night of the date – so why was the Doctor treating it as a daydream? She couldn't see a Chapman at the bar, either. Had the Doctor deliberately erased him? And why?

"My, my, Seven." The Captain's rough alto voice shook her out of her thoughts. "What a lovely dress! I didn't know our Doctor had such good fashion sense."

Seven said nothing. She had not told the older woman about her brief foray into the world of dating, but given the speed of gossip on Voyager, she probably knew the whole story already. Instead she took another look at her holographic counterpart. Was she really this beautiful out of her dermoplastic suit? Or was it simply the way the Doctor saw her?

The scene blurred, and suddenly the holo-Seven was standing next to the bar, head and shoulders lowered.

"I have failed," she said, in a voice that sliced the air with self-reproach.

(The Captain shot the real Seven a look, as if to ask: _What's this about?_ She shrugged.)

The Doctor got up from his piano and stood next to her. "Nonsense!" he scoffed.

"This exercise is pointless."

He sat down on a bar stool and leaned towards her as she followed suit. "Just because you didn't achieve perfection your first time out," he said in his encouraging-teacher voice, "That doesn't mean you've failed."

"Dating is an inefficient form of communication."

Holo-Seven smoothed her short skirt; Real Seven remembered how oddly vulnerable the soft silk had made her feel. The Captain's lips twitched with the effort to hide a smile.

"I prefer the way you and I communicate," Holo-Seven told the Doctor. "We say what we mean; simply, directly."

"You and I do have...a rapport..." The Doctor did not meet her eyes. "But we are colleagues. We are not pursuing romance."

"No, we are not," said Holo-Seven.

There was a pause in which they simply sat together, wrapped in their own thoughts. Seven had been wishing she _could_ find a mate someday who was as easy to talk to as the Doctor, and thinking of how unlikely that was in a shipful of irrational, sometimes highly volatile humanoids. What was the Doctor thinking? Real Seven could see his face quite clearly from her position, unlike in her memory; he had been turned away from her then, as he now turned away from her counterpart. The frown lines around his mouth had deepened; his eyes were unfocused, gazing wistfully into the distance. The Captain was not smiling anymore; instead she watched the holographic pair with something almost like pity in her face.

"But perhaps we should be," Holo-Seven continued. "Pursuing romance, that is." She turned toward the Doctor with an appealing look in her wide blue eyes.

Real Seven and the Captain both started up. _This_ was where the daydream came in.

"Seven?" The Doctor turned back to her, his face alight with hope. "Do you mean it?"

She stroked his face with a steel-laced hand. "Why not?" she whispered.

The Doctor beamed. "In that case, my lady," he said, taking Seven's hand and kissing it elegantly, "May I have this dance?"

He ordered an old 20th-century tune called _Someone to Watch Over Me_; it had a gentle, old-fashioned melody that resonated perfectly with the bar's décor. Seven watched herself and the Doctor swaying to the rhythm, one hand on his shoulder, the other clasped in his hand. With her high heels, their heights were nearly identical.

Her lilac silk and golden hair glowed next to his dark green jacket; their faces were very close, almost cheek to cheek. Just like they had danced in reality, except that the Doctor had couched it in yet another social lesson. Seven saw, and remembered, how well they moved together ... as naturally as breathing.

It had been a strange sensation, she reflected; nothing like the awkward sequence of steps she had gone through with Chapman. The tingling warmth of energy from his photonic body; the absence of a scent, which would have unnerved human women but did not faze a former Borg; the hush of slow-motion like in an old 2-D film – _was_ it a malfunction of her chronographic sequencer? – all these details rose up in her memory as she watched, and she began to feel as if she, not her counterpart, were living it over again.

Seven looked over at the Captain, whose stern face had softened to such an extent that she looked ten years younger. She was smiling slightly and her eyes were rather bright.

"Did you know about this, Seven?" she asked.

"Clarify."

The Captain gestured to the holographic dancers as the Doctor led his partner in a graceful underarm turn. "About the Doctor being in love with you, of course. I know interpreting people isn't your forte," she said, one hand on Seven's arm. "But believe me when I say I know a man in love when I see one. The Doctor is just like any flesh-and-blood male in this respect."

Seven's logical mind was beginning to put the facts together in spite of herself. No wonder the Doctor worked so patiently with her during their lessons, never giving up in spite of all his grumbling; no wonder he was so very protective, more so than with Torres or even the Captain; no wonder he had erased Lt. Chapman from the scene; no wonder he smiled so much in her company. This also explained a certain mysterious look he gave her sometimes, a certain tone in his voice... _"I feel as if we've become more than colleagues." "I enjoy your company."_ And it explained the dancing.

The Doctor was, she decided, as evasive and deceptive about his feelings as any human. Lewis Zimmerman had programmed him well.

"Why didn't he tell me?"she asked, her voice dangerously clipped.

"He probably guessed you'd react like _that_," said the Captain, scrutinizing Seven as if the former drone's expression made her nervous. "It's a sort of defense mechanism, you see; sometimes we don't admit our feelings to the people we love, because of how it would hurt if they rejected us." She looked away, pinching the bridge of her nose as if she had a headache or a bitter memory. "The Doctor obviously values your friendship too much to risk it."

Seven was still confused – the intricacies of human relationships were a puzzle to her sometimes – but she could more or less see what the Captain meant.

When they looked back, the song was winding down; the Doctor and the other Seven stopped, holding hands, just looking at each other.

Then he moved one hand to the back of her neck and kissed her softly. A kiss the real Seven had never felt ... one she suddenly longed to feel.

They were interrupted by a burst of rather flat and crackly-sounding piano music – a recording preserved from three hundred years ago, still as peppy as when it had first been played.

The holographic Doctor and Seven were singing a duet among the large boxes, computer consoles, and green-flashing Borg alcove of Seven's cargo bay. She stood by her console, reading the sheet music with intense concentration as he wandered around the room, beaming and air-conducting briskly with one finger.

"_You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,_

_you make me happy when skies are grey._

_You'll never know, dear, how much I love you;_

_please don't take my sunshine away."_

His tenor, her soprano. His sunshine, her shadow. So different, yet blending together perfectly. And the singing woman was glowing, just as she had at Chez Sandrine, even though her hair was pinned up and she wore a plain red biosuit. Seven had always considered beauty irrelevant, but suddenly she was struck by the contrast between her idea of her own looks and the stunning young lady in front of her.

"Captain," she asked. "Why has he altered my appearance? This...hologram is much more aesthetically pleasing than I am."

The Captain gave a little laugh and touched Seven's shoulder. "You look just the same, my dear Seven," she said. "Just as beautiful as he sees you."

Seven's head reeled. It was too much to take in; the Doctor found his memories of her so precious he recreated them as dreams. The only true events in his daydream collection so far.

She, a Borg, was loved by an Emergency Medical Hologram who happened to be her best friend.

"Captain?" she asked, her blunt voice giving way until she sounded almost like the child Annika. "How should I proceed?"

"That," The Captain spread her hands. "Depends on how you feel. Are you attracted to the Doctor? Do you feel ready for a relationship? If you don't, you know, you needn't tell him. Your friendship wouldn't have to change. But if you do feel ready, there's nothing stopping you."

The Captain drew herself up and caught Seven's eye in a no-nonsense way. "But whatever you decide, Seven, think about this very carefully. You two are valuable members of my crew, and I wouldn't like to see either of you hurt."

"Noted, Captain." Seven put in such an effort to sound like her usual self that it came out a bark.

The Captain dismissed her – ostensibly to take some scans in Astrometrics, but really to take some time alone – and Seven exited the holodeck, still feeling as if her cortical node had been replaced with a spinning top.

=/\=

Her regeneration cycle that night was erratic. She paced around the cargo bay; she recorded notes in her personal log; in between, she dreamed.

She dreamed of pink clouds of nebulae. The hiss of a hypospray on the skin of her throat. White wine and foie gras in the Sickbay office. Low resonant notes on a baby grand. The electric touch of a holographic hand. A cushioned bio-bed and a face bending over her: a pale, balding man with a square jaw, brown eyes and a musical voice. He helped her up, led her to a mirror and smiled.

_Look at yourself, Seven of Nine. You're human again. _

At the time she had raged and wept to see the long-haired stranger in the hospital gown, so naked with her white skin unshielded by steel, weak and floppy as a rag doll. But in the dream she looked in the mirror and saw her implants shine against her soft skin, saw the elegant lines of her figure and the proud tilt of her chin. She saw the man standing next to her – the man who showed her how to smile – and she smiled.

_I was not human then, Doctor, but I am tonight._

And in true Borg fashion, not wasting any time, she plunged herself into research, determined to discover the Doctor's daydream malfunction if she had to work all night.

"Regeneration cycle incomplete," said the computer.

"Irrelevant," snapped Seven, hitting buttons with a resounding _click_.

=/\=

The Doctor did not leave Sickbay even after Lt. Torres had repaired him. He was deeply embarrassed over having his soul broadcast across the holodeck; he felt like a dirty sock pulled inside out. His fantasies of commanding the ship and being a hero were one thing, but – Seven! Had she seen the dance at Chez Sandrine, the nude model scene or (heaven forbid) the catfight with B'Elanna? He thought he could never look her in the face again.

This was why, when he looked up from a data padd to find a striking blonde in a blue catsuit looking down at him, he pulled his feet off the desk and scrambled up out of his chair with more speed than dignity.

"Er, please state the nature of the medical emergency?"

Seven locked her hands behind her back, took a deep breath and told him.

"I have romantic feelings for you and I wish to pursue a relationship."

The words were pure Seven – blunt, efficient, and the least romantic he'd ever heard. But her face flushed pink as she said it and her blue eyes were nearly all black from their dilated pupils. His tricorder could have told him how fast her heart was pounding, but the sight of the pulse beating at her white throat was enough.

He moved out from behind the desk, took her face in his hands and kissed her. They were in Sickbay, surrounded by white walls and sterile equipment, but there might as well have been a tower and fireworks for all they cared. For the moment, their universe shrank to fit only themselves, wrapped in a blanket of stars.

=/\=

_Personal Log, Kathryn Janeway_

_Seven and the Doctor have begun dating. I admit I am a little apprehensive, given that they are so alike – stubborn, opinionated and somewhat lacking in diplomacy – but I am confident that this relationship will help them both, whether it lasts or not. They have a beautiful friendship – open, trusting, and fiercely protective of each other. They understand each other better than I do either one, and they are happier now than I have ever seen them._

_Sometimes I wish I could see the daydreams of a man who loves me; see myself as he would see me, beautiful, brave and wise. Yet, after all, I believe it would be better for humans – and holograms – to keep their minds to themselves. I will do my best to ensure that such a violation of a crewmember's privacy does not happen again._

_End Log_


End file.
